Soil Change Matters International Workshop - Overview

Soils change in response to land use, land management and climate. Understanding the mechanisms and rates of change in fundamental soil properties, their extent across landscapes, and the drivers of change, is critical for management of soil and land to ensure enduring productivity and the provision of ecosystem services. A reliable evidence base for soil change can be created through research into fundamental soil properties and processes, which coupled with monitoring, can be used to develop models to support management and policy decisions. Soil scientists, land managers and policy makers occupy different intellectual domains and each can contribute to a soil change dialogue focussed on providing the best science for managers, policy and decision-making. Clarity is needed concerning the knowledge needs of policy makers and the latter need to understand what is achievable by science and at what cost. However, communication is often limited by the discipline-specific language used by each group. Facilitated communication would improve the impact of science on policy by enabling scientists to better understand policy maker needs and enabling policy makers to better understand scientific data interpretations, limitations, and gaps. The international workshop 'Soil Change Matters' in Bendigo, Australia 24-27 March 2014, brought together 200 delegates across these intellectual domains to talk to each other, share conclusions, questions and data, and to learn about scenarios for soil change and for soil policies.